Leadership, Work and Organisation Research Seminar: Gender at Work in Logistics Supply Chains
About this seminar
This seminar explores how gender shapes work experiences in the UK logistics sector, focusing on the challenges and support needs of women truck drivers.
Speaker
Professor Al James
Professor of Economic Geography, Director of Research in Geography, and Outgoing Head of Geography, Newcastle University.
Professor James’ research focuses on labour, gendered work-lives, social reproduction, AI work futures, digital labour platforms and the gig economy. His current research is funded by the ESRC Transforming Working Lives programme (‘Making Space for People in Truck Driving Work’), in collaboration with Debbie Hopkins (Oxford), Kaveri Medappa (Oxford), A.C. Davidson (Sheffield) and Nicky Gregson (Durham). Prior to joining Newcastle, he held lectureships at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Cambridge.
Profile: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/aljames.html
Abstract
With 79% of all goods sold in the UK moved by road, freight drivers form an essential component of supply chain capitalism. However, with high rates of driver attrition and an estimated UK shortage of 100,000 truck drivers, these supply chains are threatened. In seeking to understand the origins and solutions to this crisis, research in logistics and transport studies is presently constrained: drivers are analysed as mere ‘operators of mobile freight units’, or else rendered invisible in the careful coordination of ‘freight flows’ and optimisation of ‘freight tonne miles’, ‘mobile inventories’, and ‘movement of vessels’ metrics.
In seeking to advance an alternative humanistic analysis grounded in drivers’ everyday lived experiences of being used as labour in logistical supply chains, this paper engages with drivers of Heavy Goods Vehicles in the UK – previously identified as a ‘logistical precariat’ – whose demographics are striking: 287,000 drivers, 99% male, 95.5% white, and 65% aged over 45 years. Less well documented are the 2,200 women HGV drivers in the UK, who remain largely invisible in logistics research, employer provision, and government response.
Accordingly, this paper asks: (1) How is trucking work differently experienced by the women truckers whose labours enable supply chains to function? (2) How might women truck drivers be better supported at different stages of the lifecourse, in ways that can enhance the recruitment and retention of women in UK trucking?
The paper draws on rich ethnographic data from in-depth interviews with 14 women HGV drivers juggling the demands of trucking with care for younger and older children and family dependents, as part of our larger survey cohort of 229 women HGV drivers (or 10% of the UK’s total female driver population). These data offer vital new insights into women drivers’ experiences of struggling to juggle the unpredictable demands and rhythms of trucking work with family responsibilities of unpaid domestic labour, social reproduction, and care – alongside common experiences of misogyny, harassment, and lapses in female health and safety.
These tensions and hardships span different stages of motherhood, including pregnancy, maternity leave, post-maternity return, and care for older children. The analysis also explores women drivers’ coping tactics and support networks, developed in the absence of effective employer support.
The paper breaks new ground by demonstrating how gender identities, uneven household divisions of labour, and gender relations of care powerfully shape labour dynamics amongst drivers in logistics supply chains, in ways which remain heavily under-researched within transport and logistics studies. The study argues that women’s experiences must inform sustainable and effective responses from employers, industry and government to the UK HGV driver shortage and high rates of labour attrition.